Limiting ultraprocessed food and Homemade tortillas

One of my big 2025 resolutions is to stop eating so much ultra-processed food (I live in Japan, and be it pre-made dishes, convenience store junk food or conventional junk food, my nutrition was really not as good as I wished it to be.). To anyone interested in the subject, I recommend Ultra-Processed People: The Science Behind Food That Isn't Food by Chris van Tulleken. Anyway, as a direct result of that resolution, I picked up homecooking again.

I‘ve been getting better at managing what ingredients I have in the fridge and come up with recipes to use and rotate ingredients so that nothing goes bad.

I used to be a recipe-based cook. I would religiously follow a recipe to the T and not know what to do with the rest of the remaining ingredients. It would be a wasteful mess and burn me out from cooking again.

Recently, I turned to an ingredient-based approach. I keep a mental image of what I have in my fridge and try to buy ingredients that would complement it well to make a dish. I shop in small amounts every day after work (Japan with its stores open up to 21:00 are the best for that.). I also try to listen to my gut as to which vegetables look/smell best for me. This intuitive approach actually has some scientific grounding and works very well for me.

Anyway, onto the cooking. A few days ago I used some leftover veggies to make a tomato sauce, and bought some coriander (or cilantro, whatever you call it) to add some flavour to the finished pasta.

However, it comes in a huge bag and I had a lot of it left. To use it, I had the idea of mixing in tomato, avocado, shallots, garlic, and some lemon juice to make a salad. It dawned upon me that this salad would fit nicely in a wrap, and so I looked up the recipe for flour tortillas.

It only needs 4 ingredient: water, flour, salt, and some fat. I chose to use butter, which gives them a naan-like flavour. The secret to having a nice workable dough is to let it rest, ideally more than 30 minutes. Sometimes overnight in the fridge.

And here it is. This was a lot for one meal, but I won’t mind enjoying it for one or two more days. The acidity in the lemon juice will keep the avocado from oxidising too much.

Definitely try homemade tortillas!